Wednesday, 18 January 2017

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a
scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor
less." Theresa May has clearly
been reading her Lewis Carroll.

Yesterday, she
declared in her speech to her assembled minions cabinet members,
diplomats and reporters that the UK would be a country open to the world. That’s ‘open’ in the mayspeak sense of ‘closed’,
of course; with strict border controls preventing any foreigners from getting
in. Still, perhaps we can expect a major
recruitment campaign for the UK Border Agency – see, Brexit does create jobs
after all. Or then again, perhaps
not.

It wasn’t the
only example in the speech of words not meaning what they appear to mean at
first sight. Take her comment that no
deal is better than a bad deal, for instance.
It’s a nice sound bite, and makes her sound like a tough negotiator –
but what does it actually mean?

We know by now
that the worst case in any possible trade arrangement with the EU27 is that the
UK falls back on WTO rules. It’s surely
obvious that even the maddest of EU negotiators wouldn’t seriously try to put
anything worse than that on the table; any negotiation at all (and therefore
any deal resulting from such negotiation) will, by definition, be better than
that, because we're negotiating up from that point. But what she has, in effect, said
is that unless she considers it a ‘good’ deal she will reject it and walk away
with the WTO option. Unless they give
her what she wants, she’ll walk away with something even worse – like all good
mayspeak, it’s the exact opposite of what the words seem to mean when first
heard.

Putting a gun
to your head and threatening to shoot yourself unless the other side backs down
is an approach which works well in a comedy film, but only
because the script writers can decree that the audience are sufficiently stupid
and credulous to fall for it. Someone
needs to explain to her that, in this case, she’s not writing the script.

It gets better
(by which, obviously, I mean worse).
Having said for months that she couldn’t even spell out what she was
aiming to get because that would betray her negotiating hand, she’s now told
the other side, in very plain terms, that she’s quite happy to walk away with
nothing. It’s going from one extreme to
the other. Why even bother negotiating?

There are
people arguing that a vote for Brexit didn’t necessarily imply a vote for
leaving the single market, and that she’s therefore going beyond the mandate
that the electorate gave. Strictly
speaking, that’s true – leaving the single market wasn’t on the ballot paper. But once you interpret the referendum outcome as being first and foremost a
vote for controlling borders (although that wasn’t actually on the ballot paper
either), then the decision to leave the single market necessarily follows. For all the talk since 23rd June,
it has been clear from the outset that abolishing freedom of movement and
remaining in the single market were incompatible.

I was
surprised, at first, that the pound bounced back up as she spoke – until, that
is, it was explained that the part of her speech that caused the bounce was the
part referring to giving MPs and peers a vote on the final terms. The currency traders believe, apparently,
that that leaves open the possibility of parliament voting to reject the terms
of any deal. It’s a theoretical possibility
of course; but the government will control the terms of any vote, and it’s more
likely to be about the terms on which we leave rather than whether or not we
leave. And even if it were to be on the
principle, does anyone believe that the parliamentary majority in favour of
staying would actually vote according to their consciences?

Overall,
the speech has left me upbeat and optimistic.
In mayspeak terms, anyway.

1 comment:

The moment her government loses any vote in the Commons, or a serious vote in the Lords (i.e, on a constitutional issue outwith the 1911 (amd 1949) Parliament Act) Mrs May will seek a new mandate from the electorate and all things considered I expect she'll win by a landslide. What after all are the alternatives?